Dan Kennedy's blog on media and politics • published by the Boston Phoenix from 2002 to 2005

Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Test-driving Apple's online
music store. Media Log is taking the day off as the deadline for
another project looms. However, I did want to report the results of
my test-drive of Apple's iTunes Music Store. (It's not a website;
rather, it's accessed through Apple's iTunes software. But you can
learn all about it, and get started, by
clicking here.)

Overall, I find it cool enough that
I feel compelled to say that I don't own any Apple stock. I suspect
it's a place I'll be returning to again and again. But you want to
know the particulars, right?

First, the bad news. Apple's
Macintosh computers already comprise less than three percent of the
personal-computer market. To take advantage of the music store,
though, you have to have not just any Mac, but one of quite recent
vintage, running OS X (preferably the latest, OS X 10.2, a/k/a
Jaguar), with a fast G3 or G4 processor, oodles of hard-drive space,
and a broadband connection to the Internet.

One correspondent suggested to me
yesterday that these stiff requirements might be Apple's way of
forcing Mac-owning music-lovers to upgrade. No doubt that's part of
it -- OS X is Apple's bet-the-company effort to keep Macs relevant,
so it makes little sense for Steve Jobs to keep catering to those who
own increasingly outmoded machines. But it's at least equally true
that the music store is a huge, complex operation that requires a lot
of horsepower. Designing a version for older Macs might have been
pretty much impossible.

I am perversely fortunate in that
my three-year-old PowerBook recently died, forcing me to buy a shiny
new iBook that I couldn't really afford. So I was good to
go.

Before I could even enter the
store, I had to download two beefy pieces of software from Apple's
website -- QuickTime 6.2 (18.4 MB) and iTunes 4 (8.3 MB). Like I
said, you need a broadband connection.

The software installed quickly and
easily, though, and in way less than half an hour I was perusing the
store. It appears to be loaded with good stuff, including some online
exclusives designed to entice you to buy.

I settled on an alternate take of
Bob Dylan's "Everything Is Broken," from his Oh
Mercy album of 1989. I
entered some credit-card information, hit the "buy song" button, and
boom -- there it was, a few minutes later. (By clicking on song
titles, you can also get free 30-second samples.) A 99-cent charge
will show up on my credit-card bill at the end of the
month.

"Everything Is Broken" sounded
pretty much the same as the original, only Zimmy was slightly more
energetic, and the lyrics were different in spots -- addressed
specifically to a woman, unlike the version he finally settled on for
the album. More important, the sound quality was excellent --
noticeably better than the MP3s I've downloaded from various free
sources. (Strictly for research purposes, of course!) That's because
Apple is using an enhanced version of MP3 known as AAC.

I can also burn the song onto a CD
or, if I had one, copy it to an Apple iPod MP3 player. I imagine you
could copy it to a non-Apple MP3 player as well, although it would have
to be converted to the regular MP3 format.

Though 99 cents seems more than
reasonable for a song, I question the $10 being charged for most
albums. For a few dollars more, you could get better sound (AAC is
still compressed, after all) and nicer packaging. And though I
haven't actually bought an album online yet, I'm pretty sure that
you're also not going to get all the liner notes.

Still, this is a deeply impressive
effort. This is sure to become the wave of the future -- provided
that the paranoid record companies don't lose their nerve.

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About Media Log Archives

The Boston Phoenix's Media Log was launched in 2002 by the paper's then-media columnist, Dan Kennedy, who continued it until he left the paper in 2005. The Phoenix's current media columnist, Adam Reilly, is now the author of Media Log, which has since been renamed Don't Quote Me. Kennedy, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern University, blogs at Media Nation.